Month: October 2015

Halloween is just a couple days a away and no matter how old you are, its always an excuse to get into the spirit by dressing up, pranking and trying to scare others, and is the only time where it’s socially acceptable to eat an excessive amount of candy.

No matter what the company might sell, it’s one of the few times during the year where marketers have the chance to use their creativity to connect with their target audiences and not to stick to certain rules or expectations from their audience and from other departments within the organization.

Here are some of our top favorite halloween marketing campaigns that do a great job of engaging with their customers as well as sharing fun, original and inventive content with their audience to further promote their brand.

There are countless digital marketing agencies, which is both a good and bad thing for you. On the plus side, it means you have a bunch of options from which to choose. On the downside, you have a bunch of options through which to sift. You’re putting a lot of faith in an agency to help you grow and improve your business, so don’t make your decision lightly.

When selecting a digital marketing agency, consider taking these steps:

We now live in a very technology-driven world. That’s not a revelation to anyone. Neither is the fact that social media has essentially changed the way in which in a significant population of the world communicates—not to mention how the media delivers information and how us marketers attract and engage with our audience in effort to convert them into leads.

Within the realm of social media there are new platforms and networks cropping up on a daily basis, but there are still the tried and true top networks in which most marketers insist on having a presence. Arguably the most popular networks for marketers to target are Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn an Google+. But there are others including SnapChat and possibly live streaming video networks like Periscope and Meerkat that will also join the ranks of those where marketers dictate essential participation in the very near future.

One very important aspect to always keep in mind is to really do your research of the types of audiences on each social media network and to invest your time and money in only those that are used by your targeted audience. While it would be absolutely wonderful to have your company be actively engaging on every big social media platform out there, it’s not realistic, productive or cost-effective.

To help get a start, take a look at the following infographic created by the folks over at Sprout Social for further insight and demographics of popular social media networks. The statistical breakdown of what types of people are using each of the most popular and widely-used social media networks should help you begin to determine how to best segment your audiences and choose which networks to use, as well as create content for each.

Like technology, marketing is fickle and always evolving. What’s cool today is ancient next week. For many businesses and entrepreneurs who don’t have time to stay up-to-date with marketing trends, they often end up relying on stale methods. However, if there is one marketing trend that is worth getting up to speed on, it’s content marketing. Not only has it proven its success, but also its staying power. Content marketing isn’t going anywhere, which means you can’t ignore it.

The point of content marketing is to engage your customers. Rather than making a blatant sales pitch in the form of an advertisement, you are instead showing your audience that you understand your industry and that you have credible expertise. This knowledge ultimately helps persuade your prospects to view your services or products as a necessity.

Another reason why content marketing is so great is because you can recycle it for other marketing efforts. If you have a blog post, you can feature it on your website, share it on social media, publish it on LinkedIn, use in an email campaign, repurpose it into a presentation or eBook…the list goes on. You can easily use a single piece of content for multiple marketing strategies.

Don’t believe us? Let’s look at some cold, hard stats to show the power of content marketing:

Have you ever filled out a form on a website? Downloaded a whitepaper? Signed up for email newsletters? Called a company after reading a blog article on their site? Then you have seen firsthand the results of good marketing calls to action (or CTA).

While it may seem redundant to ask someone to do business with you when the whole point of your website or marketing is to build business, it’s not. Your CTA helps guide your audience to do exactly what you want them to do, whether it’s filling out a form or ordering your product. A simple change in your CTA can significantly up your conversion rates and, because it doesn’t take significant work to change and edit your CTA, you can easily test out a few different options and see what works best for your business. There are numerous routes to take with calls to action. You can make them informational, short and sweet, or downright creative and out of the box.